Let’s see: freedom of information, freedom of speech, freedom of innovation, net neutrality, mere conduit, never deep packet inspection, never ad injection, unlimited downloading, right to privacy, no blocking, no filtering, court orders always…
Archive for the ‘Tech Evolution’ Category
Tech companies are being held to a higher standard. They have only themselves to blame
Posted: 2013/05/22 in Bandwidth Management, Blocking, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Net Neutrality, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionIsrael is World’s Largest Drone Exporter
Posted: 2013/05/22 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution3D-printable food? NASA wants a taste
Posted: 2013/05/22 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionInternet service providers in the UK have today begun blocking one of the world’s largest streaming movie portals
Posted: 2013/05/20 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionIn a follow up to similar actions, the MPAA obtained a High Court order which compels all major ISPs to begin blocking Movie2K, a massive site with millions of visitors each month.
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TorrentFreak can confirm that in the last week of April several of the UK’s leading ISPs including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, and almost certainly O2, EE and Sky, received a copy of a High Court order compelling them to block the sites.
BT have already begun blocking the site in the UK and Virgin Media inform us that they too will initiate a blockade today.
“Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring it to prevent access to Download4All and Movie2K in order to help protect against copyright infringement,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.
“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company, but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-block-huge-movie-site-movie2k-proxy-immediately-unblocks-130520/
More than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Posted: 2013/05/20 in Education / Awareness, Google, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThat’s more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That’s almost one out of every two people on the Internet.
More:
http://youtube-global.blogspot.nl/2013/05/heres-to-eight-great-years.html
Sociologist, philosopher, computer industry pioneer and inventor of the term “hypertext” Ted Nelson is claiming that he knows the identity of Bitcoin inventor “Satoshi Nakamoto”
Posted: 2013/05/19 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionIn a rambling – and, let’s face it, odd – 12-minute post on YouTube, Nelson spins out the suspense, throws in a dialogue with himself as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and finally ends with the statement that the mystery developer of the cryptocurrency is Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, research professor of mathematics at Kyoto University.
Bitcoin was proposed in 2008 in a paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, with the first client released in 2009 (a point Nelson scrambles at around 9:15 of his video, giving the date as 2011).
His identification stands on three legs:
- Mochizuki can rightfully be identified as being smart enough to have conceived of Bitcoin;
- Mochizuki doesn’t use the conventional scientific peer review process. Rather, his habit is to publish, and leave it to other mathematicians to sort their way through his reasoning; and
- Bitcoin would fit Mochizuki’s work-rate.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/19/ted_nelson_thinks_hes_outed_bitcoins_nakamoto/
Google isn’t just the backbone of the Internet anymore. It’s rapidly becoming the backbone of your entire life
Posted: 2013/05/19 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionGoogle to become yet another unstoppable, all-knowing force governments will have to reckon with…
Thanks to data you’re voluntarily giving up to a private company based on your Web searches, photos, Gmail messages, and more.
After spending three days at I/O this week, it became more apparent than ever that unless millions (billions?) of people suddenly change their mind and start using alternative tech tools, or unless the government steps in waving the anti-trust banner, our lives, our history, and our personal wealth could be managed by one company –– Google.
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Google Now scans your email and knows when your Amazon package is arriving. It knows what sports scores to show you based on the teams you’ve searched for. It knows what stock prices to show you based on the companies you search for. It scans your calendar and reminds you when to leave to make your appointment on time. And all that data is delivered to you without you having to ask.
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The question to ask now is, are we OK with this? Does the benefit of faster search, better transportation, and automated news updates outweigh giving up so much of our lives to a computer run by a private company that mines our data?
They’re issues we’d have to tackle gradually, but hopefully not before Google advances faster than we can adapt.
More:
http://www.infowars.com/googles-plan-to-take-over-the-world/
IP Infringement Index assesses and scores websites by reference to their relative degree of IP infringement
Posted: 2013/05/18 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionwhiteBULLET:
- GATHERS a broad range of website infrastructure and infringement information, including legal, technical, operational, revenue, commercial data
- ANALYSES data by reference to an objective and consistent methodology
- CLASSIFIES websites to create the IP Infringement Index
Audio watermark blocks playback of pirated movies and sends viewers to digital retailers to access titles legally
Posted: 2013/05/18 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolutionhttp://variety.com/2013/biz/news/new-ant-piracy-software-uses-power-of-suggestion-1200481389/
and
Anti-Piracy Technology Links Consumers With Legitimate Services
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/anti-piracy-technology-links-consumers-523387
Mass Layoffs At Rapidshare. Signs Of Demise, Or Just Cashing The Chips?
Posted: 2013/05/18 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionRapidshare, once one of the world’s premier file hosting and sharing websites has just laid off 45 of the company’s 60 employees according to the Swiss news portal 20min. The company, once the epitome of file hosting on the Web is facing hard times after it changed its business model dramatically in the past year.
More:
http://www.ghacks.net/2013/05/17/mass-layoffs-are-signs-of-rapidshares-demise/
“Unfortunately, we have to part with a number of employees,” Sidler told the paper, adding: “But RapidShare will continue to operate, and we have concrete plans for our future.”
That future likely won’t look at all like RapidShare’s past: The company used to run the world’s most popular one-click file hoster, and was frequented by millions of file sharers looking for safer alternatives when music labels and others started to go after P2P users. However, Rapidshare quickly found itself in court, and fought long legal battles with rights holders in Germany and elsewhere.
More:
http://gigaom.com/2013/05/17/rapidshare-mass-layoffs/
Previously:
Rapidshare Boss And Internet Millionaire Christian Alexander Schmid Buys Himself A New Lair, Possibly With Use Of Middle Man
http://vrritti.com/2013/05/02/rapidshare-boss-and-internet-millionaire-christian-alexander-schmid-buys-himself-a-new-lair-possibly-with-use-of-middle-man/
Banking Privacy More Important than Copyright Enforcement, Court Rules
Posted: 2013/05/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Jurisprudence, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionPreviously:
Dutch Judge: ING Bank Cannot Be Forced To Hand Over Personal Details Of Pirate Site Operator To BREIN
http://vrritti.com/2013/05/17/dutch-judge-ing-bank-cannot-be-forced-to-hand-over-personal-details-of-pirate-site-operator-to-brein/
Apple Hits 50 Billion Apps Served
Posted: 2013/05/16 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThe Ebook Pricing Email That Steve Jobs Sent to James Murdoch
Posted: 2013/05/16 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionMurdoch, ultimately in control of what happens at Harper Collins, was approached by Steve Jobs to undermine Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing model, reports All Things D. Jobs explains in the email that he thinks Haper Collins should “throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”
That said, the rest of the email softens the overall message: those prices are really suggested as caps, and Jobs admits that the idea might not work out. But it is clear that the plan was to organize a market which charged more than Amazon.
More:
http://gizmodo.com/the-price-fixing-email-that-steve-jobs-sent-to-james-mu-507348524
Copyright minister: Google has better access to No. 10 than me
Posted: 2013/05/16 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Google, Online advertising, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionGoogle has greater access to No. 10 Downing Street than the government’s own ministers, one such minister has admitted. Viscount Younger of Leckie, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Intellectual Property – the third copyright minister in a year – made the candid confession before the Media, Culture and Sport parliamentary Select Committee on Tuesday.
Leckie was asked by Labour MP Jim Sheridan about the multi-layered and close relationship between No. 10 and Google.
“I’m very aware of [Google's] power, put it that way,” Leckie replied. “I’ve also very aware that they have got access, for whatever reason, at higher levels than me at No. 10.”
Asked to elaborate on this fascinating insight, Leckie responder:
“They are a vociferous action group and a big company to put it bluntly, and are quite powerful”.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/16/govt_ministers_candid_google_confession/
Nintendo claims ad revenue on user-created YouTube videos that feature its games
Posted: 2013/05/16 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Google, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Online advertising, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionNintendo has started claiming ad revenue on user-created Youtube videos featuring its games, according to reports from Youtube users.
Nintendo does not want to block videos containing content that it owns from appearing on Youtube (as many film and music publishers have), but it wants to place ads at the beginning and the end of videos featuring Nintendo games, such as Let’s Plays, with that revenue going to Nintendo as opposed to the creator of the video.
Prolific Youtube channel owner Zack Scott has posted on Facebook about the demands. “I think filing claims against LPers is backwards,” he writes. “Video games aren’t like movies or TV. Each play-through is a unique audiovisual experience. When I see a film that someone else is also watching, I don’t need to see it again. When I see a game that someone else is playing, I want to play that game for myself! Sure, there may be some people who watch games rather than play them, but are those people even gamers?”
Nintendo has issued the following statement to GameFront on the matter: “As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a Youtube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the Youtube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on Youtube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”
More:
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/05/16/nintendo-enforces-copyright-on-youtube-lets-plays
Previously:
YouTube has a special deal with Universal which sees content taken down at the record label’s request and DMCA counter notices blocked with no chance of appeal
http://vrritti.com/2013/04/05/youtube-has-a-special-deal-with-universal-which-sees-content-taken-down-at-the-record-labels-request-and-dmca-counter-notices-blocked-with-no-chance-of-appeal/
